Teens say NO to video on small screen devices

http://digg.com/gadgets/Teens_say_NO...screen_devices
http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/08/13/small-screen-blues/

"According to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey, the kids these days,
they're not all that enthralled with watching video on their cell phones
and other small screen devices."

....and I don't want to watch postage-stamp size TV either.

"Bruce Tomlin" wrote

...and I don't want to watch postage-stamp size TV either.

Even Jay Leno has made jokes about inviting the gang over to watch the big
game on a cell phone. There's some technology is just a waste of bandwidth.

"Dave Gower" wrote in
:


"Bruce Tomlin" wrote

...and I don't want to watch postage-stamp size TV either.

Even Jay Leno has made jokes about inviting the gang over to watch the
big game on a cell phone. There's some technology is just a waste of
bandwidth.

Yep...a 1080i datastream coming out of my computer card in that form is one
thing. A picture on a cell phone is best an icon about what to do next to
dial or recall a phone number.


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667

As the kids say....
Well, duh!!!!!!

Japan has had TV cell phones with analog tuners for years. They're a
gimmicky sideline of the overall market; none of the high-end phones had
them.

Japan's one-seg digital TV cell phones haven't taken off either. No big
surprise there, either. There aren't the same programming choices on
broadcast TV. What's more, for most of the programming that kids, teens,
and adults want to watch, the small screen sucks.

One-seg wasn't helped either by the fact that the phones were rushed to
market and turned out to have major firmware defects. There's now a major
recall in progress to load new firmware, along with instructions on how to
avoid the various crashes, hangs, etc. with the old firmware until the
phone gets updated.

Small screen TVs aren't a new concept either. I've owned two (a Casio
TV-410 for Japanese channels, and a Casio TV-400 for US channels) analog
small screen LCD TVs for nearly 20 years. They're cute. They work.

But there are very few circumstances where they actually are useful.
Maybe if you know you are going to be in an airport waiting lounge when
a new broadcast of your favorite show comes on that resolves the
cliffhanger at the end of the last season. But for the most part, it's
one more thing to carry.

You really do need a telescoping antenna for VHF reception (yes, even in
Japan!) and that sets a minimum size for the gizmo. The TV cell phones
have not solved that problem.

OK, let's now talk about TV tuners for laptops.

I rejected a USB tuner out of hand; the purpose of a laptop is to be
portable, and having to have awkward wires and a separate USB device is
not exactly portable.

So we look at PCMCIA cards. The only ones on the market right now have
analog tuners, and are now dirt cheap. I bought one for $45. It has
NTSC, PAL, and SECAM color capability, and can handle any TV system. It
also has an FM tuner. So far, so good.

But wait a minute. There's no f*cking TV antenna, just an F-connector.
What? I have to connect an external antenna?!? Well, so much for
cordless portability. Oh, and for FM you have to use a separate antenna
connector?!? [This makes sense if you hook to cable TV, but not to an
antenna.] Another strike against cordless portability. There's also a
multi connector for S video, composite video, and stereo audio.

All of this is fine and good, but that means if you want to watch TV on
your laptop you have to attach external rabbit ears with a 200-75 dongle,
do a Al Bundy family "assume FOX viewing positions",... Not to mention
having to carry this crap along with you.

And the picture is noisy. Golly gee, it seems that the laptop interferes
with its own TV reception. Who'da thunk it?

Will digital solve the problem? I doubt it.

An antenna is still needed. UHF won't need as large of an antenna as VHF,
but it still needs one. Remember that cell phones are at the uppermost
end of VHF and a cell covers a much smaller geographic area than TV. WiFi
is at even higher frequences and even smaller geographic areas.

So you can't expect a card with a little 3 inch antenna.

The computer's self-generated VHF noise that I saw would preclude COFDM at
VHF frequencies. That noise was far greater out the multipath that I see
on the large screen TV with analog reception. Getting the antenna away
from the computer helped, but the wire from the antenna still has to go to
the computer.

And, with all these technical issues, the fact still remains -- there
aren't all that many situations where you can reasonably watch TV on your
laptop *especially* with all the gear that you need to carry.

I'm going to survey the current Japanese digital TV market in a few
months, and see if they have any portable digital TVs yet. I doubt it.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:32:24 +0000, Dave Oldridge wrote:

A picture on a cell phone is best an icon about what to do next to
dial or recall a phone number.

I'm waiting for the "Earth: Final Conflict" style communications
gadget with the fairly large screen you could unroll when you
used it (might actually be possible with OLED sometime
soon - maybe before the Optimus keyboard shows up for real :-).